


Pre-Emptive Strike

by Brigantine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Emissary in Training Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Nemeton, Scott is a Good Alpha, post 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1843042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott and the pack are holding their own against the weirdness the Nemeton lures to Beacon Hills, but Stiles can't sleep, and he suspects Derek's starting to crack beneath the surface.  Stiles decides that something fundamental has got to change.  He's going to need some help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pre-Emptive Strike

**Author's Note:**

> This ignores the Season 3b finale, and I have not seen the start of Season 4 yet, so. I blame Crosby & Nash. Also, I have no idea whether or not all life carries a wee bit of lightning in it, no idea at all, but I'd like to think so.

In early April Stiles starts looking for a part-time job. This is perhaps poor timing, given how much catching up he's got to do at school, what with having spent a fair chunk of the semester possessed by Evil, but Jeep repairs wait for no man, and so Stiles manages, through the sheer luck of the local newspaper's want ads, and brilliant evasive maneuvering during his interview, to secure for himself twelve hours a week of gainful employment, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday afternoons at "Ogham," the bookshop that recently replaced the tanning salon three blocks north of the Sheriff's station. The proprietor pays in cash, which probably means Mr. Giovannoni is laundering money for the Mob, but Mr. Giovannoni pays Stiles better than minimum wage in that cash, and given the price of gas these days, Stiles is willing to do a whole lot of hand-waving. Look, there's Stiles's hand, waving cash at the gas pump.

By his second Wednesday at the shop Stiles is not entirely unconvinced that Mr. Giovannoni might be a wizard, or some sort of hobgoblin. Possibly a variety of wood elf. Mr. Giovannoni is tall and skinny, with bushy salt and pepper eyebrows that jut furiously over large, dark eyes, like waves breaking over a pair of shiny black stones. Mr. Giovannoni's nose is generous and aquiline, his ears wide-sprung, and long-lobed like a statue of Buddha, and his hair is a mix of brown and silver, thinning to fuzz over the dome of his round head. Stiles has heard that people's ears and noses keep growing as they age, and as Stiles has variously figured Mr. Giovannoni's years to be somewhere between about sixty and a hundred and twelve, depending on the daylight, Stiles supposes his large nose and large ears _could_ be the reward of a sprightly old age and a long life well-lived.

Or he might be a very tall gnome.

~~~~~~

Sometimes when Stiles wakes and can't get back to sleep he drives, patrols the edges of what they're starting to think of as Scott's territory. It's 4 o'clock dark on a Thursday morning when Stiles, sleepless again, is driving the Jeep on the main road that skirts the north edge of the preserve. A black wolf darts out of the trees at the side of the road and races the Jeep for a couple hundred yards, then puts on a burst of sudden speed and sprints well ahead of the Jeep, finally dashing across the road to disappear into the dark forest again on the other side. Stiles is sure it's Derek. How many fluffy black wolves can there be in northern California? These days the answer might not be as obvious as one might think, but Stiles is confident. If the wolf is not Derek then Stiles's life just became considerably more complicated, and this is not the hour of the morning he wants to think about that. Or any hour of any morning, if that's an option.

Derek gave up his Alpha power to mend Cora, but according to Peter Derek's mother could shift into full wolf form, and while Stiles is reluctant to take anything Peter says at face value Stiles knows through horrible first-hand experience that Derek's sister Laura could do it. Stiles wonders exactly when it was that Derek figured out how. He tries to imagine Derek practicing in the loft. The images are a bit bizarre, and faintly nauseating, but mostly hilarious.

Since Derek got back from wherever he and Cora took off to after the bloodbath of Deucalion's Alpha pack he's been calmer, steadier, always ready to back Scott up. He's seemed happier, at least for a given value of Derek Hale, Werewolf Curmudgeon, but still, Stiles wonders whether Derek is often more at ease as a wolf than as a man these days. Stiles wouldn't blame the guy, all things considered.

~~~~~~

Stiles wakes sobbing, tears rolling along his cheekbones down into his ears, dampening the pillow bunched awkwardly beneath his head. He rubs at his eyes, at the wet salt on his face. He doesn't know what time it is, but dawn looks to be a long way off.

"Stiles."

Stiles is too exhausted to be startled. "Derek?"

He rolls leftward, and the shape of Derek shifts in the faint light coming through Stile's open window. "I heard you. Your heartbeat, your grief."

"Shit." He grimaces in the dark. "At least I didn't wake up my dad. What were you doing out there?"

Derek shrugs, and moves out of the uncertain light beneath the window to kneel next to Stiles's bed. His voice is soft, intimate in the close dark. "What did you dream?"

"Nothing, I'm fine, it was just." Stiles stops himself from brushing off the nightmare, and he says, "I stabbed Scott in the stomach with Kira's katana. Again. God." He swallows hard, feels himself shaking, the bed shivering with the force of it. "We were standing on the Nemeton, and Scott was leaning against me like he couldn't stand on his own, and he kept asking me, _Where are you? Where are you?_ and I couldn't let go of the sword, and I couldn't pull the sword out of Scott, and I didn't know the answer to the question."

"You're here, Stiles."

"But am I me? The nogitsune had to create a second body to free itself from me. How am I supposed to know which is the real one, and which is the copy? And if I'm the copy, what did he make me from? What if I'm tainted? What if I hurt someone again?" He feels the tears surge again, fights them back. "What am I made of?"

"Don't say 'again.' None of what the spirit did was ever you. Stiles, I don't understand how it happened, but you're flesh and blood, and you're you, and you're right here."

"Am I? Or am I gonna wake up from this dream into a new nightmare? I mean, it wouldn't be the first time."

Derek raises one hand and spreads his fingers. "How many fingers?"

"Five. Dude, I'm not concussed."

"If this was a dream I'd have six. That's how I always know."

Stiles argues, "That's exactly what a dream you would say."

Derek huffs and flicks him hard on the forehead. 

"Ow! What's that for?"

"Did that feel real?"

Stiles snorts, "You are a horrible dream friend!"

Derek reaches out to rub the sore spot with his thumb, warm, easing the sting. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"No you're not," Stiles says, and then, thinking about it, "You're the one who always shows up to try. I'm sorry I once suggested Scott leave you to die by the side of the road."

Derek flickers an eyebrow at him. "Thanks." He's watching Stiles intently, as though he's either expecting Stiles to say something else, or he's got something going on in his head that he's not sure whether or not he wants to share.

Stiles decides to wait him out, surprisingly comfortable in the darkness between the two of them. 

"You weren't the only person the nogitsune got into," Derek says. He's hunched in on himself, leaning against the side of Stiles's bed.

"Yeah. I heard about Isaac and the twins." 

"Not just them," Derek says.

"Oh. I'm sorry. Tell me?"

"It was after the fight with the oni in the loft. You remember how it could spread bits of itself, little shards, as flies. Wounds from the oni took a long time to heal."

"Eew." Stiles buries his face in his pillow. "The flies. Please don't remind me about the flies."

"I almost set Chris Argent on fire." Derek hunches further, making himself small, so that Stiles is looking down at the top of his head.

"That wasn't you," Stiles says. He's got an urge to rest his hand on Derek's head, to comfort, but he's not sure what's allowed.

"His sister burned my family to death. I was so angry, and so lost, and I couldn't reach _her._ "

"You didn't do it," Stiles points out.

"I was waiting for Allison to get home, so she could watch," Derek whispers.

Holy...

"But it turns out Chris is really good at getting himself loose. He might have had to shoot me if Scott and Lydia hadn't found you when they did. I wasn't exactly seeing reason. I'm not proud of the memory."

Stiles brushes his hand lightly over the top of Derek's head. There's no product in Derek's hair, and it's soft. "I don't think you really wanted to hurt him."

Derek looks up, and Stiles withdraws his hand quickly. "A part of me must have, or what would the trickster have had to work with? It's terrifying to lose control like that, knowing what I'm capable of, Stiles."

"Yeah," Stiles says, because he understands, boy does he understand. "Hey, we're bros now. We've shared a homicidal insect parasite!"

Derek snorts, the hint of a smile at one corner of his mouth. "I didn't understand at first why the nogitsune chose you, but I think I get it now.

Stiles isn't sure he wants to hear this part. "Yeah? Why me?"

"You're a trickster too," Derek says. "Clever. You're good at games, at strategy. There is a ferocity in you that strangers don't expect. I think he was attracted to all of that."

"Oh, good," Stiles mutters. "I'm not attractive to gay guys, but chaos spirits find me irresistible. Peachy."

Derek looks at him quizzically, then reaches up and pokes him in the middle of his forehead, easy, just getting his attention. "Hey. Scott's lucky to have you on his side."

"Thanks," Stiles says, and he means it, because he knows Derek does.

~~~~~~

Some evenings after Stiles has finished his homework, or come home from the book shop he and his dad get together at the kitchen table for cold-case study sessions, searching through old files from Dad's time as a deputy, and later as Sheriff for hints of supernatural causes to old crimes. What they find is that until the Hale fire there seem to be infrequent possibles, but after the reawakening of the nemeton and the demise of the Hale family more of the old cases start to appear a little weirder with informed hindsight.

One night Dad, crouched over an old file that really does look to be a dispute between regular human neighbors gone horribly out of control, stops with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. He's got that particular long-focused stare that tells Stiles either that the puzzle pieces are suddenly coming together to make a clear picture in his dad's head, or the puzzle pieces aren't coming together the way they ought, which in itself tells Dad something important, and someone (usually Stiles) is going to be in trouble in the near future.

"So there's Derek Hale," Dad says thoughtfully, "mostly a regular kid at school for all anyone who wasn't a werewolf, or say, a goblin, or a witch could tell, and then one day Kate Argent burns down his house with all of his family in it, and he's orphaned at age fifteen, except for his big sister, who's still really a kid herself, leaving no one around to teach a lost teenage boy anything about anything." Dad looks at Stiles, his faraway focus suddenly near and very sharp. "And six years later Laura Hale is dead, Derek's back in town, I'm interviewing him as a suspect, and no one comes to pick him up from the station after he's turned loose. No one but Derek and I show up at the cemetery to bury Laura next to their parents. He was so shocked to see me there, in fact, I thought he might run. Didn't Scott say Alan Deaton used to be Talia Hale's emissary? What the hell happened there?"

 _What the hell happened there?_ Stiles has learned to interpret as Dad-speak for _Someone who should have known better fucking dropped the ball._

Stiles shrugs and sloshes a spring roll around in a puddle of plum sauce. "When Derek came back to town looking for Laura he thought Deaton was The Alpha, like Derek didn't recognize him at all. I guess it's no surprise Derek was a terrible Alpha. He didn't have a clue how to go about it, and no one was offering him any. I wonder why Deaton didn't say something? Could've saved himself a punch in the face, if nothing else."

Dad takes a deliberate sip of coffee and stares at him. "Yeah," he says dryly. "That's what I was thinking." 

"I get it," Stiles assures him. "If Deaton was supposed to be his family's emissary, then why wasn't he mentoring Derek the way he's mentored Scott? Back then my number one priority was making sure Scott didn't get murdered by hunters, or murdered by a rogue Alpha, or become a murderer alongside said rogue Alpha, or get dragged off to a secret underground government laboratory to be vivisected, so I admit I spared little to no worry for Derek Hale, but yeah, it's a fair question."

~~~~~~

On a Friday in early May, while Stiles is sprawled in a corner of the book shop reading the section on skinwalkers of a first edition printed in 1887 instead of shelving it, Mr. Giovannoni's long, skinny legs hove into view, and Stiles looks up with an apologetic, "Uh, I was just..." which is interrupted by Mr. Giovannoni creaking down to place a battered Latin primer next to Stiles's left knee, and a tall to-go cup of coffee from the shop next door, which Stiles has learned is run by Mr. Giovannoni's wife. They're like Mr. and Mrs. Sprat, Mr. Giovannoni being tall and narrow, throwing a scarecrow's shadow across the bookshop's floor in the evening light, while his missus is short, round, and beaming, with a stack of thick, white ringlets piled on top of her head, and just as bafflingly ageless as her husband as she bustles behind the counter of "Buttercup," which is located conveniently next door, or, if one is in the know, on the other side of the discreetly located door not available for public use in the stockroom. Stiles is definitely in the know. The Missus G. makes a pecan cherry tart to die for. Dad must never find out.

Stiles eyes the Latin primer. "Did I misfile that? I'm sorry, I'll -- "

"Nope," Mr. Giovannoni says. "The coffee you drink. The Latin you read, and learn." 

"Um, okay, but I don't, I hadn't planned on, see Lydia -- "

In a voice like wine barrels rolling around on a cellar floor Mr. Giovannoni declares, "Knowledge is power."

"Eeeeyyes," Stiles agrees, feeling slow to catch on.

Mr. Giovannoni turns and ambles away like an enigmatic stork down the left hand aisle, past a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1957 which, inexplicably, has a red "SOLD" tag stuck on it, then turns and fixes his sharp, dark gaze first on the book in Stiles's hands, then the Latin primer on the floor, then on Stiles himself. "A _little_ knowledge can be quite dangerous. There's gonna be a test, so get cracking."

~~~~~~

Stiles wakes at 3:13 a.m. sweating into his sheets, heart pounding from a dream he can't remember, which he decides is maybe just as well. He gets ready for school, tosses his backpack into the Jeep and goes for a drive. He heads for the road near the preserve. There's no guarantee Derek will be there, either in two or four-footed form, but Stiles isn't going back to sleep any time soon. He rolls down the window, lets the May air in, the smell of pasture, and redwoods, a hint of brine from the sea.

Maybe it's coincidental timing, or maybe Derek hears the Jeep, but it isn't long before the large black wolf is pacing Stiles's Jeep along the road's shoulder. The moon is bright and high, lighting the asphalt between the trees, and Stiles cuts the headlights. He and Derek follow the road this way for a while, the moonlight throwing their shadows long ahead of them, then sideways as the road turns.

After a while Derek drops back to sit panting at the side of the road. Stiles puts the Jeep in reverse and backs up to meet him. Derek pads around to the driver's side and jumps up to put his big feet on the lower edge of the window.

Stiles grins, "You want a ride home?"

In reply Derek lunges forward and slurps Stiles's surprised face with a long, red tongue, then leaps away from the Jeep as Stiles yelps and wipes frantically at the wolf spit on his cheek.

"Augh! Fleabag!"

Derek bounds across the asphalt, pauses just long enough to look back with a sharp-toothed grin, then disappears into the darkness beneath the redwoods.

"Smartass," Stiles complains as he shifts up into second gear. But he does feel better.

~~~~~~

During lunch at school on Wednesday Lydia notices Stiles frowning at the Latin primer cracked open to "sum es est," and agricolae amanting with terra, and she demands an explanation.

She follows him in her car to the bookshop after school. She marches up to the cluttered register, from which Mr. Giovannoni tracks her approach with sharp interest, a hint of suspicion, and a raised eyebrow.

Lydia rests her hands on her hips and stares up at Mr. Giovannoni with a cool, evaluating expression.

After a minute or so Lydia and Mr. Giovannoni each grunt, "Hum," and nod brusquely at one another.

Lydia pronounces, sounding satisfied, "All righty, then," as she turns on one sharply-clad heel and marches briskly back through the shop.

Stiles looks between Mr. Giovannoni standing at the register and Lydia's retreating back.

"She'll do," Mr. Giovannoni pronounces.

Stiles sputters, "She'll do? She'll do what? I'm sorry, what just happened?"

Mr. Giovannoni looms over the register and fixes him with an expression like a dyspeptic vulture. "Don't you have shelf listing to do?"

"Ahh, sure," Stiles says, backing away into the safety of the bookshop's eclectic stacks. "Ogham"'s customers - none of whom Stiles ever sees - somehow manage to make one hell of a mess.

~~~~~~

The night before his almost-final Biology exam, Stiles awakens struggling out of his bedsheets, drenched in fear sweat and his heart thundering in his chest. He lies on his back, softly whining into the dark of his bedroom while his heart rate slowly calms.

"Stiles."

Stiles rolls over to find Derek crouched beneath his window, his eyes glowing bright blue. He blinks, and his eyes go dark.

"Hey," Stiles says. "I wasn't screaming, was I? My dad's on a night shift tonight. I guess it wouldn't matter anyway."

Derek moves closer, out of the faint light from the window. He kneels up near, like he did the last time he brought Stiles down from a nightmare. "What did you dream? Do you remember?"

Stiles picks at the corner of his pillow. "I was tied up in bandages and someone I couldn't see was burying me alive beneath the bleachers on the lacrosse field."

"Oh," Derek says. Stiles can see him grimace in the dark, a quick glimpse of human teeth. "What do you think it means?"

Stiles shrugs and kicks at his sheets, shoving the bedclothes to the bottom of the mattress. "Man, I don't even know where to start."

"How did you feel?"

"How did I _feel?_ Did I mention the being tied up and buried alive part?"

"So you were helpless, and overwhelmed by something you don't understand," Derek says. "Bound up by the remnants of the time the nogitsune had you?"

"I hurt people who didn't deserve it. Allison is dead, she--." He swallows hard, fighting down the whine of grief, hot and sharp in his chest. "She died in Scott's arms. He watched the light fade from her eyes, and he couldn't bring her back, and he loved her, Derek."

"It wasn't you," Derek says. "You said the same to me just days ago, and if you expect me to believe it about myself, then you need to believe it too, Stiles."

"But I was there to feel the blood on my hands. That is a Technicolor memory there, Derek."

"I understand," Derek tells him, and of course he does, Stiles thinks. Of course Derek understands, really it's a wonder either of them ever sleep. That any of his friends ever sleep soundly, peacefully.

"What if..." Derek rests his arms across his knees, and Stiles realizes that Derek is naked. He was probably out doing his night-time wolf-patrol thing, heard Stiles freaking out, and came to the rescue, which is nice of him, in a weird apex predator kind of way, but it also means that Derek seems to be spending more and more of his nights as a wolf, rather than as a man.

"What if it's got nothing to do with the nogitsune directly? What if it's the feeling of helplessness that's important?"

"Maybe I'm the weak link in the pack, and I'm afraid I'm going to get used again to hurt the people I love."

"You answered that quickly," Derek says. "As though you've been thinking about it for a while."

"Pretty much since day one. No superpowered Stiles, here." 

Derek says, "When we first met, when all of this started, to me you were mostly a lot of annoying noise and flailing limbs, but I learned quickly that between you and Scott you were the one who thought ahead. And you don't hold back when it comes to defending the people you love. Sometimes even people you don't much like, which, thanks for that. You jump in with both feet where angels might fear to tread. Not everyone has that kind of courage."

Stiles huffs, warmed by the praise, but trying to sound put out. "Stupid's not a superpower, Derek."

"Yours is the kind of stupid, then, that your friends have learned to count on. It isn't common, Stiles."

Stiles laughs aloud, "I'm uncommonly stupid, yay!"

Derek grins, bright and quick in the dark, reaches up and drags him off the bed, all at once. Stiles lands in a heap on the floor in front of him. "Ow. You know, I could loan you a pair of my dad's sweatpants, and you could sleep here instead of your lair in the woods, or at Grandma's house, or whatever."

"You don't think your dad would object to finding me here when he gets home in the morning?"

Which brings home to Stiles that he was in fact implying, mostly for the lack of specifying otherwise, that Derek would be sharing Stiles's bed.

Stiles untangles himself from the floor, decidedly not glancing toward Derek's lap. "Post Alpha pack post son being possessed by evil trickster fox spirit not a lot freaks Dad out anymore."

"He's still your father," Derek says, and then, "Okay."

In the morning when Stiles wakes Derek is gone. That side of the bed is still warm, and the window is slightly open. Stiles rolls into the warm spot Derek left behind and falls back to sleep until his alarm clock goes off.

~~~~~~

"When you say 'imp' that sounds like something cute and small," Scott complains to Deaton. He points at the body lying the length of the exam table, nearly six feet of patchy grey and brown scales. "This is not cute, or small. It was really mean and fast, and its claws are super sharp." He holds up one arm in front of Stiles's nose for close inspection. "Look at that, it's been almost an hour, and I'm still healing!"

Stiles jerks backward, trying to focus, but mostly to not get smacked in the face with Scott's bloody arm. "I was there, man. Fast, sharp, shrieky." He mimics fangs with two fingers in front of his mouth. "With nasty, big pointy teeth! Ugh, totally chewed up my bat."

Stiles waves the remains of his aluminum bat - the very one he once used to rescue his dad and assorted parents from the cave-in at the Nemeton. 

"Dude," Scott says sympathetically. "That's your favorite rescue bat."

"Ex favorite rescue bat," Stiles says, aggrieved. He gingerly touches his fingertips to the ragged edges left behind by the imp's teeth. "What're we gonna do about the Nemeton? We can't keep having random weirdos of the supernatural variety show up. We've got homework. Jobs. And then more homework. Also, how come they're always mean?"

Deaton explains, "The energy the Nemeton holds is mostly dark. You still feel the heaviness of it within you sometimes, don't you? From when you crossed briefly to find your parents."

Scott nods, but smiles a little. "It's not so bad now. You know how you said it'd be like a tattoo, or a scar? Scars can fade. I think mine is, slowly." He looks hopefully at Stiles.

"Ahh, let me get back to you on that," Stiles says. He asks Deaton, "Listen, was the Nemeton always y'know, evil? I mean, I can see where the blood of nine people murdered, screaming and choking would create some kind of poisonous energy, but before that dormant period, what about that? And before Jennifer Blake, after it got woke up by... Um." He stutters to a stop, remembering that Scott wasn't there to hear Peter's story, and Stiles doesn't know how much Deaton was privy to.

Then Derek says, "Paige," and he pins Stiles with a keen, lowering expression.

He and Isaac are standing in the doorway, wiping the blood from their faces and forearms with towels from the other room. Isaac has had to abandon his t-shirt, lost to rags. Derek's isn't much better, and like Scott they're both moving carefully.

"I didn't..." Stiles begins. "Peter told me and Cora."

Scott looks between them. "Paige? Who's Paige? What happened?"

Derek leans back against one of the cabinets and frowns at his shoes.

"You don't have to," Stiles says, though he hasn't been able to help wondering how Derek's version of the story might vary, given Peter being Peter.

Derek shrugs, an uncomfortable roll of his shoulders. His lips tighten and he lets out a small puff of air from his nose, as though bracing himself.

"We were in high school. Fifteen years old, me and Paige. She was my first big crush, and I was hers. Somehow Ennis found out about Paige and me, and he got the idea that if she was in his pack he could use that as leverage to get my mother on his side in a pack dispute. Ennis ran Paige down like a deer, like prey. I tried to stop him, but he was a mature Alpha, and he nearly broke me in half."

Derek laughs, tight and bitter. "Wanting to get on my mother's good side, as though she would ever condone--. In the end the turn didn't take and Ennis abandoned Paige to die. I took her to the Nemeton, thinking maybe there was a way to save her, but it was silent. I wouldn't have known what to do anyway, but I was desperate. Paige was in agony, and there was nothing I could do to help her except to end it."

"Jesus," Isaac says.

Derek stands up straight and looks at Scott. His expression is open, plain. When Derek isn't scowling and defensive, Stiles thinks, it's easier to see how young he is, to see how fragile he might be. Maybe that's what the scowling and the anger are meant to hide.

Derek says, "When Peter bit you, you were sixteen years old, thrown unwilling and unprepared into a maelstrom, but all I could think at the time was that you were like me, and that we could stand shoulder to shoulder. That was naive. The bite is not a gift if you don't get to choose."

Scott, being the giant puppy that he is, melts under Derek's solemn apology and reaches out to touch Derek lightly on one shoulder. "Hey. I blamed you for pretty much everything back then, I know, but I get it now. It was like you were living through _Hamlet,_ and _Hamlet_ does not end well for anybody except Fortinbras." He looks stricken suddenly, "Oh jeez, I'm not Fortinbras, am I? I don't want to be Fortinbras!"

Stiles stares at him, slack-jawed. "When did you even read that? Dude, it's like I don't even know you anymore."

Derek smiles fleetingly. When he glances at Stiles Stiles thinks he sees, just for a split second, something shattering behind his eyes.

~~~~~~~

The last week in May Beacon Hills Preserve is visited by a small clan of Drow, who in the days before Scott's merry band of heroes locate and confront them manage to hunt, kill and devour an assortment of small game, plus several deer, the bones of all of which they leave lying around for joggers and families picnicking to trip over and be horrified by. The Drow murder roughly a dozen of the tame ducks down at Mr. & Mrs. Milner's pond, leaving nothing behind but blood and feathers.

Also, they kidnap Derek.

Standing knee-deep in bracken at half past midnight on a school night, flanked by Stiles, Isaac and Kira, Scott advises their clan matriarch, "You really need to not do that."

She flips her long, white braid over one narrow shoulder. The braid is woven together with bleached mouse skulls along the length of it. She shrugs. "We needed information. We grabbed the wolf. So what? We didn't hurt him."

Scott drops fang and lets his eyes flash. "You are really starting to piss me off."

"Ah," the matriarch says, taking a step back. "You'd be Alpha McCall, then."

"Duh," Scott says.

"It was a mournful call," the Drow shaman intones, rattling a tall staff made out of an old pool cue and festooned with what appear to be duck feathers, colored beads, several rabbit skulls, and a turtle shell, all knotted together with dirty shoelaces. "Plaintive and dread, the call came, which drew us here from afar."

Scott asks him, "How far is afar?"

"Saint Paul," the shaman says. He looks up at Scott dolefully. "As of last Tuesday, it's been snowing since October." 

"You've come an awfully long way just to look at a dead tree," Kira points out. She lets her sharp little fox teeth show, electricity sparking along the top edge of her katana. 

"We are drawn to power," the shaman says, warily eyeing the lit up katana. "The darkness called, and we must answer."

Stiles sighs and rubs his eyes. "Where'd you put the wolf?"

"We left him in the abandoned Burger Hut."

"You'll need this," the matriarch says, and one of her scrawny clansmen steps forward to hand Stiles a large silver key engraved daintily and precisely with interlocked runes. It's a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, and Stiles wonders who they stole it from.

"Magic door?"

"Magic shackles."

Great.

Stiles pockets the key and stomps off through the ferns and the budding digitalis to find the Jeep and go get Derek. Poor guy can't even catch a break while he's frolicking in the woods.

And Stiles has got a Latin quiz tomorrow.

Fucking dark elves.

 

Derek beams as Stiles helps him into one of several pair of sweat pants Stiles has learned to keep in the Jeep. "You're _smart._ " 

"Ugh, you are _so high._ " Stiles folds Derek carefully into the Jeep's passenger seat. A year ago Stiles might have found the idea of Derek baked as a loaf of bread, loose and chatty on home brewed wolf-nip hilarious, but since the nogitsune Stiles has learned a bit about how it feels to have his agency taken from him, and now, with Derek having been bound up alone, naked out of his wolf shape, and his thoughts unguarded, defenseless, it's not funny at all.

When Stiles slams the driver's side door and jiggles the key in the ignition Derek is drawing smiley faces in the condensation inside the Jeep's passenger window. Stiles backs into a u-turn and noses out of the parking lot onto the dark two-lane road.

"They wanted to know who is Alpha here now," Derek says. He draws a flower in one corner of the damp window glass, and yawns hugely. "And about the Argents. Argent. One Argent, now Allison's dead. She was... She shot me a lot, but she was sad too, that's why. And who burned down Alpha Hale's house."

Stiles winces on Derek's behalf, "You tell 'em about Crazy Kate?"

"Yep. Nope."

Stiles rolls down the window to let the night air rush in. "Which one, dude? I know you're pretty baked right now, but you need to choose."

"Was my fault. I didn't say that part where it was my fault."

"Wait, what? How can that be your fault?" His heart has started pounding, fight or flight, but he doesn't know what from. Is this what Lydia feels like when someone is about to be killed?

"Was after Paige," Derek mumbles. He's listing hard against the passenger door, droopy-eyed, his hands in his lap. "Kate was so pretty, and nice to me. And I was sad. I didn't know."

Stiles nearly swerves the Jeep into a tree. 

~~~~~~

On Tuesday night Stiles dreams that he's a squid. This in itself would be weird, yes, but also possibly entertaining, except that he's being chased by a giant sperm whale. He tries to wriggle free, all of his beautiful squidly arms flailing, trying to avoid the snapping teeth, but the whale keeps coming, its giant, tooth-lined maw ready to drag him down into the cold, gaping darkness below, nothing he can do, and then he's jolting awake on his bedroom floor, coughing into the dark and trying to catch the wind knocked out of him.

He waits for a while in the dark, thinking maybe Derek's out prowling again, the way he likes to more and more these days, and maybe he'll show up and they'll talk, and Derek will stay, and Stiles will feel better come morning. 

Then Stiles remembers that the Drow trapped Derek in wolf form; killed a rabbit, laced it with something green that made Derek loopy, easy to handle, to restrain, let them ask him questions that he couldn't help but answer. Maybe Derek won't see running the neighborhood in his wolf shape as a welcome diversion anymore. Maybe now he'll see it as too much of a risk to allow himself.

Fucking elves.

But the elves aren't the first, are they.

There was Ennis, though if he thinks about it Stiles suspects Peter's lust for Alphahood had a hand in that, so add Peter to the list. Then there was Kate, murderer and statutory rapist. Then Peter used Lydia to use Derek to resurrect himself. Then there was Jennifer... No, first there were Scott and Deaton. They tricked Derek and paralyzed him with Kanima venom so that Scott could physically force him to bite crazy, homicidal Gerard Argent. Not one of Scott's finest moments, if Stiles thinks about it, but in Scott's defense Gerard had threatened to kill his mom, and Allison too if the old bastard didn't get what he wanted, and Scott was terrified and desperate. But Deaton... Deaton threw Derek right under the bus. What kind of a family emissary does that?

It used to be Stiles was concerned almost entirely with Dad, Scott, Scott's mom, and Lydia, but recently, mostly without his realizing it, his circle of worry has grown to include a certain messed-up werewolf. Stiles is supposed to be good at multi-tasking. He's going to have to get even better. Someone needs to, and not only for Derek's sake.

~~~~~~

The last Friday before final exams Stiles and Scott sit on Scott's bedroom floor encircled by the detritus of a long, earnest study session.

"We're all looking at colleges," Stiles says. "There's Humboldt State, UCSF, Stanford and Berkeley closest, but any of those is still an hour's drive or three in an emergency."

Scott stretches and rubs at his eyes. "And in the meantime, who knows what the Nemeton will call up. This time it was dark elves, but."

"Who kidnapped Derek and truth-drugged him, like he doesn't have enough issues to start with." 

Scott shrugs and bites into another slice of pizza. It's 2 a.m. and the cheese congealed long ago, but that just means it's aging nicely. "We've all got issues, Stiles. Allison, Boyd, Erica, all dead, you got possessed by an evil fox spirit. We've all been shot, stabbed, beaten. It's a miracle we haven't all just checked out completely."

"Yeah," Stiles acknowledges, "I get that. But you've got your mom and me and I've got my dad and you--"

"Babe," Scott sings, grinning, "I've got you babe!"

"Ugh, why are we friends?"

"Look," Scott says, "Couldn't we just dig the stupid Nemeton out? It's a tree stump. A really super big tree stump drenched in murder and bloodshed and evil power, but still, a backhoe and a bunch of C-4 ought to do the trick, shouldn't they?"

"Okay," Stiles concedes. "This is why we're friends."

~~~~~~

In the small hours of Sunday morning Stiles starts awake, bleary-eyed and still draped over his laptop. It's put itself in sleep mode, and Stiles can feel keyboard marks embedded in the side of his face. He doesn't recall a nightmare, but his heart is pounding as though he's been terrified, and there's a sort of echo in his head. Like screaming.

His phone is buzzing on the desk, and he scrabbles for it, waking up fast.

Lydia's voice, frantic and straining toward a scream, "Nemeton now now now, Stiles, oh God," and then she's gone, but Stiles is already on his feet, grabbing for his jeans.

When he gets there - he's broken the speed limit by a considerable length, fuck it, it's 2 in the morning, of course it is, and by this point in his life he's only half surprised he doesn't break a leg running through the preserve in the dark - he skids to a stop, takes in the horrifying tableau posed atop the Nemeton and says, "Dad?"

Dad is carrying his special non-standard issue shotgun, and standing over Scott, one hand resting on his shoulder. Scott appears entirely unharmed, probably came running at Lydia's call, same as Stiles, but lying on the ground before him is Derek, his shoulders turned to Scott. His clothes are shredded and he lies still and silent, drenched in blood that seeps slowly into the rough surface of the old wood.

A body is sprawled nearby, tawny, heavy-limbed. As Stiles rushes forward he sees that it is dressed in heavy leather, the open shirt studded with steel; a man's body with a lion's head and thick mane over broad, powerful shoulders. Its claws are large, gleaming razor sharp, and it still snarls, dead yellow eyes open to the night, teeth long and white.

It is covered in slash wounds and bite marks, and there is a very large hole in its broad, furred chest, from which wisps of the blue smoke of wolfsbane together with the sharp, clear scent of prairie sage drift upward.

Scott hovers over Derek, touching him gently, trying to find a place that isn't an open wound. His eyes flash red, but his voice is gentle, cajoling, "Come on, buddy, stay with us. Derek, come on back, please, come on back," and it is Allison all over again, killed in battle trying to protect them, and beyond their power when she needed them most.

Scott's voice wavers, "Derek, come on..." Then he stops, and sets his jaw. He takes a deep breath, bares his fangs, and _roars._

Something large crashes away through the trees and bracken, making its escape as the sound cascading out of Scott rattles the earth beneath Stiles's feet.

Derek flinches and makes a small, agonized sound.

Scott curls over him and starts to cry.

~~~~~~

"--a few pounds of C-4, and a backhoe!" Stiles shouts in their kitchen, helpless and angry.

Dad says, reasonably, "You don't think that kind of an explosion might draw some unwelcome attention?"

"Dad, this is Beacon Hills. If anyone was paying any attention to what happens around here, or, y'know, had even the self-preservation instincts of a lemming, this would be a ghost town."

"Point taken," Dad says. "But the Nemeton's a pretty big tree stump."

"A _ton_ of C-4! TNT! Nitroglycerin, do we have nitroglycerin, can we get any?" He's babbling through tears, can't help it. 

"Stiles," Dad says, calm, and stepping closer.

"If you had got there a _second_ later, just a second, that would've been it. This kind of bullshit cannot keep happening. And what am I gonna do about it, huh? Some stupid kid with maybe a little magic, and a baseball bat? I don't even have a baseball bat, the imp ate my bat, Dad."

"Come here," Dad says, and opens his arms, to close them again tight and warm when Stiles lets himself fall forward. "Scott and all of your little slayer gang are going to take some firearms training. It's long past time."

Stiles snuffles into his dad's shoulder and nods in strenuous agreement. The irony of werewolves learning to use wolfsbane bullets in self-defense is not lost on him, but he'll have to wait until later to enjoy it.

~~~~~~

Lydia finds Stiles stocking shelves at the bookstore. He's down on the floor wrestling six new copies of _Certainly More Than You Want To Know About The Fishes of The Pacific Coast,_ each of which weighs roughly twelve pounds, when Lydia's turquoise slingbacks step into view. 

"Stiles," she hisses, "get up here, I need to talk to you."

He sits back on the worn pine planking and peers up at her. "I've got a break coming in about half an hour, you wanna browse 'til then?"

"No, I do not want to browse until then," Lydia says briskly. "If I wanted to wait until then, I would have shown up then. We need to talk right now."

One dainty hand darts down and grabs Stiles by the right earlobe.

"Ow! Hey, ow, you wanna get me sacked? I need this job. The Jeep and all the people I give rides to in it need me to have this job!" Stiles scrambles to his feet as Lydia lifts him up by his ear and hauls him to the back of the store. 

"Mr. Giovannoni is not going to fire you. The worst he'll do is threaten you with his eyebrows and give you extra homework. You should be immune to eyebrows by now." Lydia shoves Stiles into the stock room. "I went to see Derek after school," she says.

"How is he? Was Scott there? Scott said he was going to be there, to make sure Derek's still with us and Peter's not. Euch, Peter wasn't there, was he?"

"Stiles," Lydia says firmly, "Peter is still in L.A., where he belongs, far, far away. No one tells him anything anymore. If he can't be Alpha, he doesn't want to know. So. Scott was there, I was there, Derek shut us out. Emotionally, I mean. You need to go see him."

Stiles wails, "I am the least empathetic person in this group!" Shared pre-dawn confessions are one thing, he thinks desperately, but this is broad daylight, and he is actually, for real, going to have to handle this. He's not cut out for this. He is, in a word, inadequate. Not up to the task. Emotionally. This is far, far too important. Shit.

Lydia grabs the front of Stiles's shirt and jerks hard, jiggling Stiles against the wall. "I know you worry about him. I see the way you watch him when we're all together, like you're not entirely certain whether the reality he's perceiving is the same one we are."

Stiles bleats hysterically, "You cannot possibly deduce that just from watching me. Also, I do not!" Because he doesn't. At all. Not even a little bit when they were sleeping together in Stiles's bed to keep their nightmares at bay.

Lydia's expression softens. "For reasons I will probably never understand he confides in you when he won't talk to the rest of us. He kept telling Scott that he's _fine,_ and it would have been obvious to a child that he was lying, with the multiple bleeding wounds being the first clue."

"Oh," Stiles says, a sinking feeling in his chest. "Wait, did he count your fingers?"

Lydia blinks at him, "Fingers?"

"He has this thing he does when he's not sure -- "

"Stop. Stiles. Just because Derek wouldn't tell Scott or me what's going on in his head doesn't mean I wasn't listening." She demands succinctly, "Do you know what they _did_ to him?"

"The giant lion-guy?"

"Utukku. Sumerian demon."

"Ugh, whatever, yes, I was there, Lydia. Wait, what do you mean, 'they'? Oh crap, the Drow aren't back, are they?"

Lydia makes an impatient noise and flicks him smartly on the forehead. 

"Ow! Again!"

"Stop being obtuse. You're the one person in this pack I count on to keep up with me."

"Sorry. Thank you." Stiles grimaces, utterly lost. "Please explain. You're making my head hurt in so many ways."

"Stiles, I am talking about the Alpha Pack!"

"Mayhem and bloodshed, yes yes. They nearly gutted Scott, and then they used Derek to kill Boyd, an event seared forever into our collective memory." Add them to the list, Stiles thinks wildly; Ennis, Peter, Kate, Peter again, Scott, Deaton, the Alpha pack, Jennifer, the nogitsune, the Drow, fuck fuck fuckity fuck him sideways _has he left anyone out?_

"Before that!" Lydia snaps, jerking at his shirt again.

Stiles gulps, "I'm assuming it was horrible?" Such a large percent of what happens to Derek is horrible. Assuming it is a pretty safe bet.

Lydia puffs out a quick breath and looks at him sadly. "Oh, Stiles."

 

After Lydia leaves Mr. Giovannoni finds Stiles sitting on the old wooden step ladder in a corner at the back of the stockroom. He hands him a cup of green tea, and a frayed paperback copy of Roget's Thesaurus.

"The tea you drink," Mr. Giovannoni advises, gazing solemnly down at Stiles where he hunches miserably on the ladder's top step. "The book, you read." Then he turns and makes his way like a stately homing pigeon through the tumbled landscape of unopened crates and gravity-defying stacks of books back toward the door to the shop. 

Stiles sniffs at the tea, the fragrance of jasmine rising up in the steam. He sniffs at the book, wrinkling his nose at the pleasant, dry scents of tanning pages and cedar. "Is there something in particular I should be looking up? Is my vocabulary insufficient? Did we have a conversation that I missed, was I distracted by the section on Neil Gaiman again?" 

Mr. Giovannoni turns at the shop entrance and raises a ferocious eyebrow at Stiles. "It's a book, kid, you open it and see what's there. Listen. A foul-weather friend is beyond price. Beyond jewels. Go now, and be a rare thing."

~~~~~~

When Stiles gets to Derek's loft he half expects there to be a new lock, maybe a booby-trap, perhaps a fire-breathing dragon, but Derek's front door is just as woefully undefended as it's always been. What Stiles does find is his phone chiming in his pocket with a text from Scott:

_lydia says ur there. r u there?_

_Im here._

_he totly shut me dwn stiles the alpha mojo thing only wrks wen hes dying omg most stbborn wwlf evr_

_Probly why hes still alive. On it. Im going in._

_good luck n godspeed_

Stiles shoves the giant slab of rusting steel that is Derek's front door aside and steps through.

He circles the central living space just long enough to find first the spot on the floor where they found Derek, helpless and bereft, crouched over Boyd's body with Boyd's blood thick on his hands. There is a second place that looks as though the hardwood has been bleached and scrubbed, there, in the center of the the floor. He squats down and forces himself to remember what Lydia told him she'd heard when she was here; Deucalion's taunting voice. Derek, on his hands and knees in front of Deucalion, his head hanging low, as he's pinned to his own floor with three feet of steel pipe thrust into his back, jutting out through his chest, blood seeping down the steel onto the hardwood, Derek's heartbeat slow, agonizing as he kneels in the lake of his own blood.

Kali, laughing, twisting the steel.

Stiles brushes his fingertips over the bleached, roughened wood. Lydia is a banshee, not a psychic, but Derek had nearly died, and the intensity of the event had left a powerful echo for someone like Lydia to tune in. What had the Alpha pack even wanted? To recruit Scott? To kill him? To taint him? Had they meant to recruit Derek? Fucking bizarre way of going about it. Deucalion had ranted at Derek and Scott about power, but what the hell was he going to do with it?

Stiles shakes his head. Doesn't matter. Three out of the five Alphas are dead, with Deucalion and Aiden gone into the sunset, and good goddamn riddance.

Still, Derek cannot stay here. The pack cannot, will not, let him keep living here, with these two bleached-out places on the floor.

Stiles stands up and looks for Derek. "Hey," he says to the hunched silhouette in the corner of the loft.

Derek is half-dressed in a pair of blue sweatpants, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out into the gathering evening. The wounds he took last night at the Nemeton are still raw, vivid red and bloody. He looks up. "Stiles."

"So, Lydia says she and Scott came by to have a chat."

"Did she send you to check up on me? I'm okay, Stiles."

"You look like you were swept up by a tornado made of knives," Stiles argues. "The tornado in this case was called an utukku." He sits gingerly on the corner of the bed, careful as can be, but Derek winces at the small motion of the mattress anyway. 

"The giant lion guy you fought was a sort of Sumerian demon. He's probably been murdering innocents for, oh, a few thousand years. He's had a lot of practice. What the hell were you thinking, going after something like that on your own? You should have called in the troops."

Derek huffs, "Well Stiles, I didn't _know_ he was a Sumerian demon thing when I was tracking him in the preserve. I thought I could take care of the situation, leave Scott out of it. You guys have exams, and Scott's been struggling with modern European history."

Stiles gawps, "You took on an eons-old Sumerian demon so Scott wouldn't fail history."

Derek shoots him a disgruntled scowl. "I called your dad to let him know something was up in the preserve, and he came out to back me up, all on his own initiative. For which I am duly grateful, but you should be yelling at the fragile human sheriff, if you want to scold someone."

"You _died,_ " Stiles says. "I am going to be yelling at you for a while before I get to my dad."

Derek looks out the window, a conflicted expression on his face. "Scott made me come back."

Stiles bites at his lip. He asks, cautiously, "Did you not want to come back?"

"Everyone around me gets hurt." Derek swallows, stares down at his hands in his lap. "I was a horrible Alpha. Scott will be better."

Stiles inches closer to Derek, the comforter on the bed scrunching up a little between them. He wonders what Derek's body would look like if all the damage he's taken over the past year and a half were to show. Maybe for the sake of his own sanity he needs to not imagine that.

"Please quit throwing yourself away," Stiles says. 

"I am hip-deep in bloody mistakes, Stiles. Mistakes that other people have paid for."

"Stop." Stiles puts a finger to Derek's lips, belatedly recalling sharp fangs and cranky werewolves and how much he loves all of his fingers. "Just listen, not that you've got much choice, since you're incapable of fighting off a baby kitten right now."

"Stiles," Derek growls.

Right. Stiles moves his finger. "Okay, fine, but hear me out. When you were Alpha you were the King of Poor Planning, that is true, but neither Scott nor I am in any position to judge. I lied to my dad for over a year, thinking ignorance would keep him safe, while instead not knowing what he was up against nearly got him killed. Scott tried to save Jackson from being a giant poisonous lizard, and half my dad's deputies ended up bleeding out on the station floor." 

Stiles twists position on the bed, looking Derek in the eyes. "You and Scott, you try so hard to do the right thing it makes my teeth ache with the Hallmark moments. Violent, bloody, poorly thought out Hallmark Moments of Death, but yes, you both try very hard to be good guys." He reaches out to touch an unbloody spot on Derek's shoulder. "I'd miss your grumpy face if you go away. You belong to us. You're ours. Don't go around flinging yourself into forlorn hopes, Derek, please."

Derek is silent for a while, watching Stiles's face. Stiles holds his gaze until Derek nods, barely. He slumps on the bed. "I am very tired, Stiles."

"Yeah," Stiles says, and he's near certain Derek isn't just talking about needing a nap. 

Stiles says, "I'd like to stay here for a bit, if it's okay with you."

Derek scowls at him, the familiar drawing down of his eyebrows. "I don't need babysitting."

"You don't need to be alone, either," Stiles says, and he lets that float in the air between them until he's confident that Derek's starting to get it. "You helped me feel better, those nights you stayed with me."

Derek's scowl lightens, his expression a little surprised, a little pleased. "Yeah? Yeah, okay."

Once he's settled Derek drops off quickly, curled into an s-shape on the side of the bed furthest from the windows. Stiles scooches up to the head of the bed beside him and pulls the old copy of Roget's Thesaurus from out of his pack. Lingering orange rays of daylight stretch across Stiles's legs, across the bed, across the book in his hands where it falls open to a bookmark that makes Stiles grin and snort softly. The bookmark is a small, narrow image, slightly bent a the top corners, of Han Solo standing armed with his trusty blaster and his sardonic grin. The caption at the bottom says, "Never tell me the odds." 

Included amongst the other entries listed on the page opposite Han Solo Stiles finds the word;

Emissary: n. ambassador, envoy, representative (deputy, messenger, agent).

He stares out the large windows of Derek's loft, watches the light deepen to amber, change itself over to violet twilight, remake itself into starlight and moonsilver. He listens to Derek's slow, sleeping breath, barely audible, even in the nighttime quiet, the small rustling noises he makes as he rolls toward Stiles in his sleep. He makes a small whimper of discomfort as he bumps up against Stiles's hip. 

Stiles drops one hand thoughtlessly onto Derek's scalp, eases his fingers through Derek's dark hair. He catches himself, stops to think. He doesn't know when he and Derek got here, to this point where it feels natural for Stiles to soothe him the same way Stiles's mom did when he was small and feeling poorly. He starts up again, a slow, smooth rhythm. He can feel Derek relax against him.

Stiles's dad has said that Derek looks like his mother. 

When Stiles looks at his own hands he sees his mother's long fingers, his father's strong wrists. He's got his mom's weird sense of humor, Dad's fascination with puzzles. He lacks Dad's compassion, but not, he's learned, the capacity for it. A work in progress. Seventeen-year-old kid, of course he's a work in progress, duh. 

Whatever body Stiles is living in, it's him living in it. "She may not look like much," Stiles quotes into the starlit frame of the windows, "but she's got it where it counts."

Derek squirms closer and flings one heavy arm across Stiles's legs, mumbling, "Iz 'e ship 'at made th' Kessel Runnen less'n twelve parsecs."

Stiles laughs. "Geek."

"Mmpf," Derek grumbles. 

"I am remarkably fond of you," Stiles realizes aloud. In spite of his protests to Lydia it's not as much of a surprise to Stiles as it might be. He and Derek have come a long way from the early days of Stiles brushing Derek off as no more than a bully, and Derek believing he had to intimidate people in order to get any help. He wasn't always wrong, there. It must have been exhausting. 

Derek grunts and falls back to sleep. His breath makes a warm patch at Stiles's hip. Stiles gently twists a lock of Derek's hair at the back of his head into a duck tail, but it doesn't stay. He notices that Derek's wounds have begun to knit, the deep rents in him narrowing slowly but surely, and he feels a bright, sweet rush of triumph. 

Derek took the Alpha power from Peter out of rage and desperation, but the only thing he understood about being an Alpha was to protect his people, and he was immediately so overwhelmed by circumstances that that became impossible. All that had kept Derek standing by the time Scott became the Most Accidental Alpha Ever was his stubborn refusal to fall down. 

Maybe a small flame of hope, like a pilot light, tiny but steadfast.

And a good thing for Stiles that Derek has refused to buckle, because Stiles is going to need all the help he can get keeping Scott out of trouble, or twice as likely, to get him out of it after he's jumped into the deep end trying to rescue some undeserving idiot, and it'll take the efforts of the whole pack to keep the body count down.

Stiles whispers to Derek's sleeping face, "You can be my Wookie sidekick. I'll even let you win at holochess."

~~~~~~

Stiles dodges into the veterinary hospital just as a black toy poodle and her person are sidling out. The poodle gives his leg a quick sniff and shoots him a speculative look. Oh, yeah, Stiles thinks, that is pure Eau de Werewolf there, little dudette.

He finds Dr. Deaton puttering in the front office.

"Mr. Stilinski," Deaton greets. "You appear to have something on your mind. I hope it's not trouble?"

Which, wow, way to greet a guy. "Listen, I've been thinking," Stiles begins, and then Ms. Morrell slips out from the back room.

"Hello, Stiles," she says. She watches him with that coolly superior expression that invariably sets his hackles on the rise. Deaton, for all that he's taken the definition of the word 'reticent' to a whole new and aggravating level, has never looked at Stiles as though he is _less than._

He takes a steadying breath. "Ms. Morrell."

She looks at him consideringly. "How are you today, Stiles?"

Stiles says, before his brain can filter it, "Not possessed today, thanks, so no need to put me down like a convicted murderer." He's not bitter about that, no sirree.

Behind him Deaton says, "Stiles?"

Stiles holds Ms. Morrell's cool gaze. "Eichen House."

Deaton asks Ms. Morrell, "Would someone like to clue me in?"

Stiles laughs humorlessly, "Oh man, even you didn't know? That's actually kind of terrifying, that your sister's a complete loose cannon."

Deaton looks pained. "She is not a loose cannon." He glances at his sister questioningly.

Ms. Morrell says, "I was only going to do what was necessary to prevent the nogitsune from causing more damage."

"And from upsetting the balance," Stiles says. "Whatever that means. If I have to die for a cause, could it at least be a bit less vague?"

"Marin," Deaton says, "Stiles was an innocent! We were all working to find a way to help him while he enrolled himself in Eichen House. What were you thinking?"

Ms. Morrell snaps, "I was going to do what you were too chickenhearted to do, Alan. You get emotionally attached, and you lose sight of the bigger picture. You try too hard to save all of your own little ducklings, and you start to make mistakes. Has it occurred to either of you that maybe Allison Argent would be alive if I hadn't given you seventy-two hours to figure out a solution your way?"

Stiles feels the blood drain out of his face, his heart clenching in his chest. 

"That was cruel," Deaton says severely.

"It's the truth," Ms. Morrell tells him.

Stiles forces himself to take a deep breath, feels the dizzying swoop of rage rushing through him, and he snarls, "You want to talk about might-have-beens? You waited until Boyd was already dead before you told Kali and the twins it was Deucalion who killed Ennis, and even then it was only to keep them from killing _you_. What? Did you think I didn't know? Scott and I tell each other things. What a concept, huh? How much grief could you have prevented if you had ever come clean with us right from the start, instead of always playing coy with your information?"

Ms. Morrell takes a breath to reply, but Stiles cuts her off. "Ahhh, I get it, you've got a touch of the trickster in you, too, huh? Or is that a Druid thing, stringing people along, giving them just enough of the facts to keep them running? Do you get some good jollies watching us kick at the end of the rope?" 

"Stiles," Deaton says, and Stiles realizes he's taken a step forward, and Ms. Morrell has taken a step back. 

She says, "Deucalion turned on me when he realized I'd been _helping Scott,_ so no, it wasn't a game for me, Stiles."

"You call closing a mountain ash circle with Scott and Derek and two moon-crazed werewolves on the wrong side of it helping? Call me crazy, but my perception of _helping_ includes a lot less lies and betrayal."

"Stiles. Marin," Deaton says. "Please. This isn't useful."

Stiles glances from Ms. Morrell to Deaton. "Jesus Christ, our lives are not perky whodunnits with a jaunty Belgian detective and a clever reveal at the end. People _die_ when we don't have enough information a.s.a.fucking p. I do not give a rat's ass about your mystical agenda. If you're not willing to commit to Scott and his stubborn dedication to the ridiculous, impossible, beautiful ideal of people not dying needlessly, then take your cosmic bullshit somewhere else."

Ms. Morrell insists, "You are seventeen years old, and you don't know anything!"

Stiles swallows hard, his stomach cramping, bitter. "I helped set a homicidal maniac Alpha werewolf on fire. I know the stink of too much blood, and the wail of the dying. Welcome to my world." 

Stiles and Ms. Morrell stare at one another for long, heavy heartbeats, and then Ms. Morrell turns away and jerks the front door open hard enough on her way out that the little bell above it rattles instead of rings.

Stiles's heart pounds with residual anger, and maybe a little wide-eyed terror. His outrage will only get him so far, and he's convinced Marin Morrell can be genuinely dangerous if she wants to be. Nevertheless, he turns to Deaton, "You could have told us about Ennis, but you didn't. You could have told Derek who you were the day he showed up looking for his sister, but you didn't. There have been a lot of things that you could have said over the past year and a half, but you didn't, so if you want to defend her with a lecture about keeping the damn balance, I am gonna have to answer you the same way, Scott's Obi-Wan or not."

Deaton blinks at him, looking a little lost. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"I cannot be the kind of emissary you were," Stiles says. "I won't wait until we're mid-crisis and someone's bleeding before I get involved. And I will not be so concerned about the big picture that I don't see what's happening to the people closest to me." 

"You want to be Scott's emissary? That's a noble goal, Stiles, but I believe it's more complicated than you're aware."

"I have a lot to learn, I know. I'm a kid, I'm breakable, oh God so breakable, but I've already passed the job interview and survived a pretty fraught learning curve, so I figure emissary-wise I've hit the ground running. Metaphorically. And actually, quite often."

"I won't try to dissuade you, then," Deaton says. He quirks a small smile. "Indeed, from what I've observed of you since Scott was bitten, you are surprisingly... focused when it comes to protecting your own."

"Huh," Stiles says. "Derek said the same thing, more or less. Do you mean it as a pro or as a con?"

"I mean you might be more like my sister than you realize."

"Duly noted," Stiles says, and in a moment of self-reflection recognizes that Deaton's probably right. He'll have to keep an eye on that. He might need help. Good thing he's got a pack to watch out for him.

"Okay," he says, feeling the weariness of adrenaline wearing thin. "I'll just be going, then. Nice chatting with you."

Stiles heads for the front door, trips over the leg of a rolling desk chair and flails himself upright. So much for the triumphant exit. Whatever. If there's anything he's learned post werewolves it's that pride is rarely worth the cost. Though a little dignity might not go amiss.

Anyway, he's got a meeting with a tree. 

~~~~~~

When Stiles arrives at the Nemeton he clambers onto the vast old stump of oak, and he sits in the middle of it in the afternoon sunshine, and he doesn't talk. He just listens.

~~~~~~~ 

The pack (except for Lydia, who supervises) helps Stiles dig out the debris from the cellar beneath the Nemeton. The cellar is big and not quite stable, so they have to be careful, not just of the broken beams and the falling earth, but they have no way to know exactly what magical weirdness might have been stuck for the last sixty years in an old box or a jam jar they might accidentally dig up. Stiles decides that any container they find should be set aside for review later by Dr. Deaton, who sits on the hood of Derek's Toyota beside Lydia, and watches with interest.

Kira finds the acorn. She scrambles up from the pit beneath the Nemeton covered in dirt, with dead leaves and bits of old roots stuck in her pigtails, and she holds out a short, broad old Ball jar full of broken acorn hulls, and she whoops, "It's in here!"

Stiles lopes over as the pack gathers around, and Lydia and Deaton slide off the Toyota to come and see. "How did you find it? Are you sure?"

Kira nods eagerly, "Electricity! There's so much stuff down there, but every living thing carries an electric current, even a tiny one, so I looked for little bitty sparks of electricity, and there was - you know, there aren't as many earthworms in this soil as you'd think, is that because - never mind, the acorn is here, this is the jar."

Dirt and rust shower down over Scott's hand as he twists off the rusting lid and hands the jar back to Kira, to let her do the honors. She shoves her small hand in and rummages around briefly amongst the dead hulls, then pulls up a single, whole acorn, and squeaks, "This is it."

Stiles puts his hand out and she gently sets the little acorn, its hull dusty but still whole, into Stiles's dirty palm. He cackles with delight, telling Kira, "That is so cool! You're a walking, talking life detector!"

Kira bounces and grins back at him, "So are you."

Stiles blinks at her, but Isaac is saying, "We're gonna need a backhoe to fill in this cellar." He grins, "Handy I know where to get one."

~~~~~

Scott comes with Stiles to "Ogham," where Mr. Giovannoni hides the acorn in a small cavern carved into a crack-spined Volume Three of a 1934 printing of _The One Thousand Nights and a Night_ and says to Stiles, "You did good, kid," which is both thrilling and terrifying.

Scott is eighty percent certain that Mr. Giovannoni is a Muppet.

~~~~~

Beacon Hills is close enough to the coast that often evenings, with the wind swinging eastward they can smell the damp and the brine of the Pacific. The pack makes a day of it, drives west and a little north to Orick, where the redwoods ease out of the mountains, into the foothills, and on toward the sea.

Early in the evening under a thin, sharp crescent moon on the rise they find an empty stretch of beach and start filling up as many five-gallon buckets as they could fit in their vehicles and they drive home into the preserve, to the Nemeton crouching lonely and bloodstained in the dark, and they pour the water they've brought with them from the sea over it until the old wood is damp, and the earth around it is muddy with the salty water of the Pacific.

Six days later when the moon is full and high Mr. Giovannoni and his Missus Giovannoni show up at Stiles's house with the Thousand Nights reliquary, and they and the pack all gather together at the Nemeton. Even Chris Argent shows up, having been invited by Scott. He's stoic, head high, and Stiles's dad steps forward to shake his hand hard, understanding how much he's lost.

Derek, because the Nemeton is still a tough old oak, helps Stiles dig out a hollow in the center of the great severed trunk, and Stiles lights a small fire with cedar shavings, prairie sage, and goldenseal. When the ashes have cooled Derek uses a small, narrow carving tool to drill a deep, narrow well in the center, a place for a young taproot to take hold. Stiles mixes some soil into the ashes in the hollow, and he plants the acorn.

Each person in attendance steps up onto the Nemeton, pricks one finger with a pin, and lets a couple of drops of blood fall onto the fresh earth over the acorn. "This is my gift," they each say, "freely given."

After everyone has taken a turn, and entirely on the spur of the moment Scott, looking mischievous, leads Kira up to the top of the Nemeton, and they lean toward one another, giggling, across the hollow where the acorn rests, and they kiss one another beneath the summer moon.

Ms. McCall croons, "Aawwwww!" loudly, just to make Scott blush.

Stiles is standing next to Derek and he looks at him, just to see, and because everyone is together and happy and how often does that happen to them? Derek's expression as he watches Scott and Kira is soft and shockingly vulnerable, and Stiles realizes that Derek is shaking. Stiles puts his filthy, ashy hand into Derek's filthy, ashy hand and squeezes a little, nervous at making the gesture. Derek glances at him in surprise, but then he ducks his head and smiles and he squeezes back.

And then Isaac wonders aloud, "Do deer like to eat oak saplings?"

Well, hell.

~~~~~~

Over the rest of the summer the pack take turns babysitting the infant Nemeton. That they are shielding what will some day grow to be a focal point for powerful earth magic from hungry bunnies Stiles finds hilarious. What he finds even more hilarious is that his father and Scott's mom volunteer twice as often as everybody else. They volunteer _together._ Even though they are the only pack members to have full-time jobs.

Scott is so delighted that he and Stiles will "really be brothers now Stiles, that is AWESOME!" that he vibrates like an over-excited puppy any time anyone mentions it. It's adorable. But then, Scottie, for all his troublesome determination to save everybody, even people who don't deserve it, is pretty adorable. 

Derek Hale's smile is adorable. His totally unexpected, non-werewolfy bunny teeth are adorable, and it's adorable but mostly exciting when beneath a half moon as they're perched on the old Nemeton babysitting the new one, eating sandwiches and drinking hot chocolate (thank you Mom McCall) from a thermos Stiles screws his courage to the sticking place and plants a quick and terrified peck on Derek's cheek. Derek's expression of surprise blending into shy pleasure is _adorable,_ and Stiles is brilliant for thinking this, all of this, might work. He is brilliant, that's what. Also apparently a giant sap, but whatever, he's being kissed back, so time to quit crowing about his brilliance and focus. Kissing now, quick breaths and soft lips and scratchy beard stubble and then Derek pulling back looking suddenly uncertain, which, okay, this is Stiles, in what universe would Derek have seen that one coming, but then Stiles grabs Derek by the back of his neck to keep him from going away, and Derek's eyes flutter shut and he lets out the most delicious little groan that Stiles is absolutely filing away for later, and the kissing recommences.

Life is good, is what Stiles is saying.

~~~~~~

Stiles halfway opens his eyes and frowns against the early light easing in through the large windows. His back aches. They've slept on the floor again. For crying out loud, Derek's got a gigantic new king-size bed upstairs. New, because no way in hell was Stiles letting Derek keep the bed where he and Jennifer "My Favorite Hobbies Include Strangling People, Seducing Lonely Young Werewolves, and Calling On the Forces of Darkness" Blake had done the kinds of things Stiles, and only Stiles will from now on be doing with Derek. 

Also, Derek has a new loft. Same building, but two floors above his old one, and on the other side of the building. The entire pack put their collective foot down against letting Derek stay in the old place. They'd wanted to move him all the way across town, but Derek likes the deco-industrial design of the old factory. It's like living in the movie set of "Metropolis."

Stiles has been trying to recall a half-remembered dream, and he pulls it up from sleepy memory now, realizing as he does that it wasn't a dream. Last night Stiles felt the young oak tree reaching for the moon. It's early October, and the sapling is only a few months old, but it's growing rapidly, helped along by the purified energy left in the old tree, and rooting itself firmly in the blessed earth. Soon it will crack the old stump in half, as natural a thing as can be. Given that the city sits on a convergence of telluric currents Beacon Hills will always be a draw for supernatural visitors, but perhaps with the old Nemeton purified and the new Nemeton blessed and nurtured by the pack they've got better odds that their guests will be more of the learning and teaching, and less of the rending and tearing variety. 

Stiles smiles, big and happy, and stretches out, feeling all the places on his skin prickle where sticky substances from last night have dried. 

Stiles makes a low, smug noise, in response to which the burgeoning daylight is briefly blocked by Derek rolling over him and biting at the underside of Stiles's jaw without so much as a Good Morning or a By Your Leave.

"I am covered in dried werewolf jizz," Stiles observes happily.

"Yep," Derek rumbles against Stile's beard-burned neck. He rubs against Stiles to emphasize his point. Stiles can feel him grinning against his throat.

Stiles cackles, "You love smelly things. That's why you always make such of a mess of me, isn't it."

"Didn't hear you complaining last night," Derek says. "Unless yelling, 'Oh Jesus fucking fuck come on come on give it to me big boy' is how you say 'stop'."

Stiles wriggles his fingers through Derek's sleep-wild hair. "Are you going to roll in me now, is that it? Not that I'd protest, although you are kind of heavy."

Derek looms over him, braced on his elbows. The rising sunlight through the windows picks out the contours of his arms and shoulders very nicely, makes the irises of his eyes gleam green and blue as the light slides through sideways.

"You're never letting me live down the badger thing, are you."

"There were Lydia and I innocently walking in the woods..."

"Shooting crossbows at paper targets."

"Shooting crossbows at paper targets. Her aim is becoming scarily good. I offered to codename her Hawkeye, but she declined."

Derek has shrugged the throw blankets entirely off of them and rubs his bearded cheek over the dried mess on Stiles's belly.

Stiles squeaks and tries to curl up like a ticklish caterpillar, but Derek holds him down with offensive ease.

"And there was your wolfy self," Stiles gasps out through laughter, "rolling in a dead badger. Rolling, Derek, all four oh God, yes, do that again!" He gulps and helpfully spreads his legs wider. "All four feet flailing in the air as though the stench of rotting badger was the best thing since fried squirrel."

"It's a wolf thing, shut up," Derek mumbles, snuffling in a place that, it turns out, makes Stiles's brain turn into a big blob of useless mush. 

It is not Stiles's fault, therefore, that he's a little late picking up on the small noise of a key in the lock to Derek's new front door. Derek's hearing is supposed to be better than his, but he doesn't notice it either. They're both distracted is the point here.

Scott yelps, "Aaugh, you guys, gross!"

Kira chirps, "Oops!"

Stiles shrieks the first words that come to mind, which turn out to be, "Abandon ship!"

Kira squeaks and dodges as Scott backs into her in his rush to escape, and they both disappear back onto the landing, the big door slamming shut behind them.

On the other side of the door Scott wails, "Oh my God, I can never _unsee_ that!"

Kira bursts into laughter, "I told you it was too early! Also, knocking?"

"But Derek said breakfast, and I was hungry!"

"Are you still hungry?"

There's a pause, and then, "Yes."

Derek grumbles against Stiles's left thigh, "Alpha or not, I regret ever giving him a key."

Stiles ruffles Derek's hair affectionately, wondering whether they can have sex in the shower without Scott hearing them. It'd serve him right for showing up at the crack of dawn, anyway. 

"Hey Derek?"

Derek lunges gently forward and rests his scratchy, pointy chin on Stiles's sternum. "Right here. Should we let them in?"

"If a werewolf and a thunder kitsune have kids, will they be electric werewolves?"

Out on the landing Scott whines, "Oh my God."

 

\---#----


End file.
